By At least 50 people have been killed in a single attack by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on villages in Sudan’s al-Jazira state, according to activists.
The RSF, which has been at war with Sudan’s regular army since April 2023, has recently intensified its violence against civilians in al-Jazira, south of the capital Khartoum, following the defection of their commander in the state to the army.
The resistance committee in Hasaheisa, one of hundreds of volunteer groups coordinating aid in Sudan, reported that the villages of al-Sariha and Azraq have been under attack since Friday morning. In al-Sariha alone, the attack killed 50 and wounded more than 200, with a total “inability to evacuate the wounded from the village due to the shelling and snipers” from the RSF.
The nearby village of Azraq has been placed under a “total siege, suffering the same violations as al-Sariha,” although a death toll could not be provided due to the near-total communications blackout in the region.
The Sudanese doctors’ union has called on the United Nations to press for safe humanitarian corridors into villages that “are facing genocide at the hands of the Rapid Support militia.” The union added that rescue operations had become impossible and that “the army is incapable of protecting civilians.”
Medical sources in several villages report that nearly all health facilities capable of receiving emergency cases have been forced to shut down.
The war in Sudan has claimed tens of thousands of lives, with some estimates suggesting 150,000 deaths. It has also caused the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than seven million people uprooted. In June, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield described Sudan as the planet’s “largest humanitarian crisis.”
Famine was declared in July in the Zamzam camp for displaced people near the town of El-Fasher, in Sudan’s western Darfur region bordering Chad.
Last Sunday, the army announced that the RSF’s al-Jazira commander Abu Aqla Kaykal had defected, bringing “a large number of his forces” with him. Activists reported at least 20 people killed in subsequent RSF attacks in eastern al-Jazira and an air strike by the Sudanese Armed Forces on a mosque in the state capital, Wad Madani, which killed 31 people.
On Thursday, neighboring Chad denied helping to arm the RSF after the governor of Sudan’s Darfur region, Minni Minnawi, accused them of doing so. Chadian Foreign Minister Abderaman Koulamallah stated, “Chad has no interest in amplifying the war in Sudan,” noting that Chad was “one of the rare countries upon which this war has had major repercussions.”
